Estes Park United Methodist Church

December 5, 2021

Second Sunday of Advent

Come Home This Christmas

 

Announcements

 

  • The Advent theme this year is “Come Home this Christmas!”
  • Today we will be honoring World AIDS Day and are accepting offerings which will be given to UM Global AIDS Fund or the Center for Health and Hope.
  • Easy Hiking Group meeting today at 3, Tuesday, and Thursday.
  • Book Study group will be meeting on Wednesday at 6PM.

 

Birthdays

Beverly Briggs 12/4

Dwight Stranberg 12/5

Sid Scott 12/6

Adina DeWitt 12/7

Ellen Flanigan 12/7

Carolyn Wills 12/8

 

 

Order of Worship

 

Prelude

Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming

 

           

Greeting/Welcome

 

Lighting of the Second Advent Candle                               Jan and Wendy Rigby

 

Call to Worship

Leader: O come, O come, Immanuel,

People: And be light for our darkness.

Leader: Be comfort in our grief, be a friend for our loneliness,

People: An oasis for our searching.

Leader: O come, O come, Immanuel,

People: Restore our joy, heal our wounds, and bring us peace.

 

 

Opening Prayer (Unison)

Loving God, be to us as a bulldozer of the spirit. Clear your road in us; clear a path through the detritus of possessions and obsessions.  Thrust aside our divided aims and devious games. Topple the ramparts of pride and the doubts that deride. Make a highway on which Christ may come and take possession of the whole territory of our being.  To the glory of your name, we pray. Amen!

 

Opening Hymn    

People Look East  #202

 

Affirmation of Faith

We are not alone, we live in God’s world.  We believe in God: who has created and is creating, who has come in Jesus, the Word made flesh, to reconcile and make new, who works in us and others by the Spirit. We trust in God.  We are called to be the church:  to celebrate God’s presence, to love and serve others, to seek justice and resist evil, to proclaim Jesus, crucified and risen, our judge and our hope. In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us. We are not alone. Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Offering

            World AIDS Day Offering

            Prayer of Blessing

 

First Lesson           

Malachi 3:1-4

                       

Pastoral Prayer

 

Special Music

           

Gospel Lesson      

Luke 3:1-6

 

Sermon       

The Fear of Home

       

Holy Communion

 

Closing Hymn       

Have Thine Own Way, Lord! #382

 

Benediction

 

Postlude

Sing We Now of Christmas